It has long been known that a variety of games are possible using the format of economic trade related to real estate and property purchase and rentals. There are several proprietary games such as MONOPOLY.TM. and EASY MONEY.TM. which are based on this approach.
In these types of games, several players move playing pieces along a path delineated by subdivisions such as squares which are assigned predetermined economic values. Players buy, sell, trade and rent properties on these subdivisions based on the economic values. Through the use of limited planning and luck, one player eventually achieves economic domination over the other players and thus wins the game.
A widely used second format for games is the varietal war game format. In this approach, a game board is subdivided into countries, which may duplicate the world as known, or battlefields on which armies are used to wage war. Such games may also involve navies. While there are a variety of rules available for determining the number of armies and navies and allowed moves, these games share the common feature that luck, throw of dice, and brute force generally produce the winning player. While certain levels of skill and tactics are useful in the above games, they have several limitations along this line. One limitation is that they rely heavily on the limited layout of the board as opposed to skill. That is, when a player lands on preassigned areas, that player automatically achieves an advantage over other players that is unrelated to skill and that almost no amount of skill can overcome. Secondly, the board layout and rules fail to account for more realistic limitations for economics and war such as overextension, modern weaponry, etc.
It would therefore be advantageous to provide a board game which provides greater flexibility in tactics based on both military and economic considerations. It would also be advantageous to provide a board game in which available military maneuvers are restricted to coincide with more realistic physical and economic limitations.